Holi
Mt Abu was recommended as a beautiful hill-station worth visiting (the only hill-station in Rajasthan) for a few days so we booked a car for 3 days and headed up there. A new 4 lane road is being built and work has started with blasting the new cutting all the way, thus destroying the reasonable 1-2 lane road and leaving a slow journey along graded dirt roads. The mountain roads up to Mt Abu were a tad hairy every now and then when buses came hurtling around blind corners, causing Mohan to squeeze to the edge of the road. Monkeys proved to be entertaining scenery along the way - the way they sit on the sides of the road in various poses is so human-like it’s funny. As well as monkeys, elephants and camels became a common sight rather than novelties… (well, the elephants were still pretty exciting to see, even after we’d seen lots of them!)
Mt Abu itself wasn’t that much to write home about and Dey and I were both glad the travel agent had talked us down to two nights instead of our planned three. After checking into the hotel, we headed off to look at the sights.
The first stop was Dilwara temple. A fantastic Jain temple built between 800AD and 1200AD. Totally made of marble, the exquisite carvings were probably the best we had seen so far. No photography was allowed which dramatically sped up our visit - amazing how much time we usually spend going back through places taking photos! Being a Jain temple, no leather at all was permitted and “women in their monthly” are warned to stay away or “will suffer”!
After Dilwara, we headed to a Shiva temple, Achalgarh. The Brahmin priest there told us the well in the centre of the temple was 5000 years old! He pointed out the ‘toe of Shiva’, located a little way down the well and then directed us to walk around the inner shrine 3 times repeating the mantra.
Having completed the circuits of the temple, we headed back towards town. When we reached the Dilwara temple area, Mohan pointed out big bonfires which the locals were building in the middle of the road for Holi.
Holi is a festival to celebrate the start of spring and a time when people traditionally throw ‘color’ - bright colored dyes and paints - on each other. The night before Holi, bonfires are lit to represent the burning of Holika, a person who according to mythology tried to kill the good son of a power-hungry king. Since it was apparently close to the time when the fires are lit, we stopped to have a look. The bonfires were like tee-pees of wood, about 6 feet high. Kids had strings of dried cow paddies which were being draped on the wood as added fuel.
In front of one unlit bonfire, a priest was performing rituals, first performing some type of blessing for the fire, then performing poojas for people. I joined the short queue and was welcomed with a surprised look and smile by the priest, before getting the customary splotch of kum kum (a pretty enormous stripe this time, actually!) on my forehead and pooja bracelet on my wrist.
Finally, the fires were lit and both went up pretty quickly. The heat was huge - we were forced to stand across the road. As the bonfires burnt, people went up and seemed to make offerings to the fires - circling them and sprinkling water or rice, or offering a coconut. As with any festival, drums and chanting were loud and vibrant, adding to the great atmosphere.
Later that night and all through the next day, we avoided being covered in color which was being thown with joyous abandon! Some people were covered from head to toe with vibrant pink, purple, green, yellow and red. Water seemed to only secure the color more ferousiously - a group of women splashing around a water pump looked positively purple from head to toe.
Cows and dogs weren’t spared, but luckily most people asked if they could ‘color’ us and were happy not to when we said no. One man with a bag of pink powder did suspiciously follow us for a while but after a couple of backward glances from us, he clued on that he wasn’t going to sneak up on us and luckily gave up.
The Adhar Devi temple was beautiful, aside from the hundreds of stairs we had to climb up the hill to get there! The temple is built within and around natual rock forms so we had to literally crawl under rock overhangs to enter temples - amazing place. Since we weren’t allowed to take cameras in, we went in one at a time, leaving the other to mind our stuff and while waiting, spoke with the young priest near the entrance. He was part of the 11th generation of his family who have looked after the temple, and starts his day at 4am with his 3 brothers. A tiny straggly kitten stained with color wandered up while I was waiting for Dey to go through - he was happy for some attention, meowing loudly whenever I stopped patting him!
Our final stop was sunset point at Mohan’s, and the best part of that was the mischeivious smile on his face when he told us there was a 1km walk from the drop off point. The walk was easy and if there hadn’t been so much smog and haze, I’m sure the view would have been good as well.
So with Mt Abu ticked off the list, we headed back to beautiful Udaipur…